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- W.D.Pa.: Def can’t repackage a losing 4A standing claim into a due process claim
- GA: No case says SW required to ask for cell phone password
- VA: Body cam video of valid arrest would not be suppressed
- NM: Trial court’s finding of consent is reversed because the court engaged in its own internet investigation beyond what the parties provided
- Reason: No Warrant, No Suspicion, No Problem: Flock and Border Cellphone Searches Excluded From 4th Amendment Rules
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Feedspot’s Best Legal Blogs and Websites 2023-2026,
also, firm website Top 90 Criminal Law Blogs 2026 -
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ABA Journal Web 100, Best Law Blogs (2015-17) (then discontinued)
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by John Wesley Hall
Criminal Defense Lawyer and
Search and seizure law consultant
Little Rock, Arkansas
Contact: forhall @ aol.com
Search and Seizure (6th ed. 2025)
www.johnwesleyhall.com -
© 2003-26,
online since Feb. 24, 2003 Approx. 600,000 visits (non-robot) since 2012 Approx. 50,000 posts since 2003 (29,000 on WordPress as of 12/31/25) -
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Fourth Amendment cases, citations, and links -
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To search Search and Seizure on Lexis.com $ -
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Stringrays (ACLU No. Cal.) (pdf)
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Congressional Research Service:
--Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Overview of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (2012)
--Outline of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
--Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (2012)
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Section 1983 Blog -
"If it was easy, everybody would be doing it. It isn't, and they don't."
—Me -
"Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well."
–Josh Billings (pseudonym of Henry Wheeler Shaw), Josh Billings on Ice, and Other Things (1868) (erroneously attributed to Robert Louis Stevenson, among others) -
“I am still learning.”
—Domenico Giuntalodi (but misattributed to Michelangelo Buonarroti (common phrase throughout 1500's)). -
"Love work; hate mastery over others; and avoid intimacy with the government."
—Shemaya, in the Thalmud -
"It is a pleasant world we live in, sir, a very pleasant world. There are bad people in it, Mr. Richard, but if there were no bad people, there would be no good lawyers."
—Charles Dickens, “The Old Curiosity Shop ... With a Frontispiece. From a Painting by Geo. Cattermole, Etc.” 255 (1848) -
"A system of law that not only makes certain conduct criminal, but also lays down rules for the conduct of the authorities, often becomes complex in its application to individual cases, and will from time to time produce imperfect results, especially if one's attention is confined to the particular case at bar. Some criminals do go free because of the necessity of keeping government and its servants in their place. That is one of the costs of having and enforcing a Bill of Rights. This country is built on the assumption that the cost is worth paying, and that in the long run we are all both freer and safer if the Constitution is strictly enforced."
—Williams v. Nix, 700 F. 2d 1164, 1173 (8th Cir. 1983) (Richard Sheppard Arnold, J.), rev'd Nix v. Williams, 467 US. 431 (1984). -
"The criminal goes free, if he must, but it is the law that sets him free. Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter of its own existence."
—Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 659 (1961). -
"Any costs the exclusionary rule are costs imposed directly by the Fourth Amendment."
—Yale Kamisar, 86 Mich.L.Rev. 1, 36 n. 151 (1987). -
"There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the Court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today."
— Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1, 39 (1968) (Douglas, J., dissenting). -
"The great end, for which men entered into society, was to secure their property."
—Entick v. Carrington, 19 How.St.Tr. 1029, 1066, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (C.P. 1765) -
"It is a fair summary of history to say that the safeguards of liberty have frequently been forged in controversies involving not very nice people. And so, while we are concerned here with a shabby defrauder, we must deal with his case in the context of what are really the great themes expressed by the Fourth Amendment."
—United States v. Rabinowitz, 339 U.S. 56, 69 (1950) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting) -
"The course of true law pertaining to searches and seizures, as enunciated here, has not–to put it mildly–run smooth."
—Chapman v. United States, 365 U.S. 610, 618 (1961) (Frankfurter, J., concurring). -
"A search is a search, even if it happens to disclose nothing but the bottom of a turntable."
—Arizona v. Hicks, 480 U.S. 321, 325 (1987) -
"For the Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. ... But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."
—Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347, 351 (1967) -
“Experience should teach us to be most on guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded
rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
—United States v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438, 479 (1925) (Brandeis, J., dissenting)
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“Liberty—the freedom from unwarranted intrusion by government—is as easily lost through insistent nibbles by government officials who seek to do their jobs too well as by those whose purpose it is to oppress; the piranha can be as deadly as the shark.”
—United States v. $124,570, 873 F.2d 1240, 1246 (9th Cir. 1989) -
"You can't always get what you want / But if you try sometimes / You just might find / You get what you need."
—Mick Jagger & Keith Richards, Let it Bleed (album, 1969) -
"In Germany, they first came for the communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a communist. Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for
the Catholics and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Catholic. Then they came
for me–and by that time there was nobody left to speak up."
—Martin Niemöller (1945) [he served seven years in a concentration camp] -
“Children grow up thinking the adult world is ordered, rational, fit for purpose. It’s crap. Becoming a man is realising that it’s all rotten. Realising how to celebrate that rottenness, that’s freedom.”
– John le Carré, The Night Manager (1993), line by Richard Roper -
"The point of the Fourth Amendment, which often is not grasped by zealous officers, is not that it denies law enforcement the support of the usual inferences which reasonable men draw from evidence. Its protection consists in requiring that those inferences be drawn by a neutral and detached magistrate instead of being judged by the officer engaged in the often competitive enterprise of ferreting out crime."
—Johnson v. United States, 333 U.S. 10, 13-14 (1948) -
The book was dedicated in the first (1982) and sixth (2025) editions to Justin William Hall (1975-2025). He was three when this project started in 1978.
Website design by Wally Waller, Colorado Springs. 
Category Archives: Excessive force
CA9: Officers didn’t use excessive force in wrestling with and handcuffing strong woman having psychotic eposide
Plaintiff’s decedent was a large and strong woman who had an apparent psychotic break and six officers were trying to control her. She stopped breathing and died. Nothing contradicts the officer’s accounts of what happened. The police were called in … Continue reading
CA9: Ptf’s shooting for a slow speed chase where all traffic laws were obeyed stated § 1983 claim and no QI
Plaintiff was attempted to be stopped by Tacoma police for driving without headlights on. Plaintiff didn’t have his DL on him, and he’d recently smoked crack. Therefore, he drove home at normal speeds and obeyed all stop signs and traffic … Continue reading
CA4: Unnecessarily shooting ptf’s dog was a 4A seizure
Officer came to scene at plaintiff’s house and parked his car within the running area of a dog on a lease between two trees. The plaintiff came out to get the dog. It barked at the officer. When the dog … Continue reading
CA9: Tasering a man in his own bed not cooperating in being arrested could be found excessive
A jury could reasonably conclude that using a Taser on plaintiff lying on his own bed, on his cell phone trying to call his lawyer, who didn’t violently resist but just pulled his arm away, was an unreasonable use of … Continue reading
MT: If only car color doesn’t match registration and everything else is correct, no RS
The car’s color not matching the registration information is not reasonable suspicion if everything else matches. City of Billings v. Rodriguez, 2020 MT 9 (Jan. 21, 2020). Plaintiff appeals dismissal of his § 1983 case for the officer pulling a … Continue reading
TN: The 4A certified question doesn’t resolve the appeal, so appeal dismissed
The certified question related to consent to search was not dispositive to the outcome of the case for purposes of Tenn. R. Crim. P. 37(b)(2)(A). Even if defendant’s consent to search the home was constitutionally invalid and exigent circumstances did … Continue reading
CA7: Handcuffing winded obese man behind his back led to death because of unknown heart condition; not excessive force
Plaintiff’s decedent was in a foot chase with officers after a shoplifting incident. He was winded, obese, and, unknown to officers, had a heart condition. He was handcuffed behind his back and died from lack of oxygen in his blood. … Continue reading
CA10: Causing a handcuffed unseatbelted arrestee to be bounced around the back seat while driving fast and recklessly states an excessive force claim; no QI
“McCowan based his excessive-force claim on his assertion that Officer Moralez placed McCowan in the back seat of a patrol car, handcuffed behind his back and unrestrained by a seatbelt, and then drove recklessly to the police station, knowing his … Continue reading
CA7: Police shooting at a car shooting at others was a reasonable use of deadly force
Police shooting at a car that just fired at others was not an unreasonable use of deadly force against the occupants. Ybarra v. City of Chicago, 2020 U.S. App. LEXIS 62 (7th Cir. Jan. 3, 2020):
WaPo: Police used a stun gun on a grandmother three times after she wouldn’t let them enter her home
WaPo: Police used a stun gun on a grandmother three times after she wouldn’t let them enter her home by Lateshia Beachum (“She is facing two felony charges of resisting arrest and battery on an officer after an interaction with … Continue reading
CA9: DC erred in defining 4A at too “high [a] level of generality”; school officials get QI
Plaintiff was restrained in school for behavioral problems. The case law is not clear as to whether this was a Fourth Amendment violation or not because some restraint in school is reasonable. The district court found a Fourth Amendment violation … Continue reading
CA9: Not clearly established that shooting a bloody man waving a sharp stick at adults and children at a soccer field was clearly established
Plaintiff was bloody and wielding a sharp stick at adults and children at a soccer field. He disobeyed police commands. He was finally shot when he was kneeling and far enough away from others that he was a lesser threat. … Continue reading
D.Kan.: Seeing shot man slumped against window in a motel room is quite obviously exigency
Clearly exigent circumstances for a warrantless entry into a motel room: “Based on the facts in this case, the court finds that the officers had a reasonable basis to believe that there was an immediate need to protect the safety … Continue reading
OH10: DV victim who shared house had apparent authority to consent to search for weapon
Police were called to a domestic disturbance, and the victim in the house had the apparent authority to consent to search of a Home Depot bucket in their house where a gun was found. State v. Henize, 2019-Ohio-5202, 2019 Ohio … Continue reading
Two on excessive force and QI
“We conclude that Detective Minium is entitled to qualified immunity. It was not clearly established in August 2014 that an officer uses excessive force when he tackles and uses a taser in “drive stun” mode on an individual he is … Continue reading
Philadelphia Inquirer: It should be unconstitutional when police officers kill fleeing felony suspects, Philly DA’s office says
Philadelphia Inquirer: It should be unconstitutional when police officers kill fleeing felony suspects, Philly DA’s office says by Chris Palmer:
E.D.Mich.: Private security guards conducting search for weapon and turning over to police was private search
Two private security guards searched defendant, allegedly without probable cause, and seized a gun off of him which they turned over to the police. This was purely a private search not implicating the Fourth Amendment. The court also declines to … Continue reading
OH5: Officer doesn’t need to be able to quote a statute in court to issue a ticket for violation of it
Even if the officer had an ulterior motive for defendant’s stop, it was based on probable cause of a traffic offense. The fact the officer couldn’t quote the statute in court doesn’t show that the stop was unreasonable or without … Continue reading
CA5: Use of deadly force against an armed, dangerous, and unpredicable man was subject to QI
Officers were entitled to qualified immunity because plaintiff could not establish that they used excessive force in violation of the Fourth Amendment. The evidence indicated that the use of force was justified under the circumstances. Because the officers thought they … Continue reading